This site requries that you enable JavaScript in your browser.
Most features of this site simply will not work without a modern JavaScript-enabled web browser.
Try visiting our site in one of the following browsers with JavaScript enabled:Firefox,
Safari,
or Opera

Program Information

First Nations Environmental Scientist Speaks on Taking Care of Our Mother the Earth

Summary: Henry Likkers is an environmental scientist with the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne’s Department of the Environment. Beginning in the mid 1900s, he observed the disappearance of wildlife in his homeland. The honey bees disappeared. The mink disappeared. The eagles disappeared.

Henry suspected that the disappearances were important warnings about the damages to the environment that were accumulating at Akwesasne as a result of pollutant releases into the air and the rivers. Large industrial facilities operated by ALCOA, Reynolds Metals and General Motors existed upwind and upstream from Akwesasne on the American side of the border. In Canada, a large Domtar factory imposed further pollutant impacts. Henry used his scientific training to begin investigating the disappearances of the animals that had long been part of the lives of the Mohawk. In time, Henry and other scientists, both Mohawk and non-native, learned that fluoride poisoning was eliminating honey bees. Data was collected and conclusions were drawn that linked PCB contamination of wildlife to the disappearance of mink.

Henry Likkers has a deep knowledge of environmental science that is based in Mohawk culture. The Mohawk know the Earth as their Mother. The Mohawk have traditionally shaped their behaviors so as to live in harmony with the Earth and the other living beings of the Earth.

If the people of the modern materialistic culture could change their way of looking at the Earth, so as to see the Mother that the Mohawk know and respect, the Earth would come to receive good treatment rather than poisoning from the people of the United States and Canada. This change of mind is essential to the future of North America and indeed the World. The Mohawk are with us to give good guidance in all things.